As interim president of the University of Southern California, Beong-Soo (“Beong”) Kim leads one of the world’s top private research universities — home to 23 schools and colleges, more than 49,000 students, 4,700 faculty, 500,000 alumni, and Keck Medicine, one of California’s leading academic health systems — all united by a mission to advance knowledge and transform lives.

Since joining USC in 2020, Kim has worked closely with the Board of Trustees, the senior leadership team, USC’s academic deans and faculty, and alumni around the world to advance USC’s mission of academic excellence, pioneering research, and service to society. After helping the university navigate through the Covid pandemic, he resolved the university’s legacy issues, strengthened governance over the health system and health sciences schools, and enabled major investments in research and innovation. He has also helped secure transformative gifts and research partnerships to expand USC’s impact across disciplines — from the arts and humanities to science, engineering, business, and health.

A passionate advocate for open discourse, he has championed campus-wide education on free expression, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom. He has also co-led significant improvements to the student conduct processes while strengthening the university’s protections against discrimination and harassment.

He has also been deeply involved in USC’s athletics programs, helping navigate conference realignment, name-image-likeness (NIL), and Title IX. He was a key member of the athletics department’s interim leadership team in 2023.

Before joining USC as its senior vice president and general counsel in 2020, Kim held senior roles at Kaiser Permanente, was a partner at an international law firm, and served in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led the major frauds section in Los Angeles.

Kim has taught constitutional interpretation at Harvard, trial advocacy at the National Advocacy Center, and served as an adjunct professor at USC Gould School of Law. He is a frequent speaker on academic freedom, health system compliance, and the future of college athletics.

The son of Korean immigrants who attended graduate school at USC, Kim was born and raised in the Los Angeles area, where he attended local public schools before graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Harvard College. He earned a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Kim and his wife, Bonnie Wongtrakool, performed cello “porch concerts” for their neighbors, reflecting their belief in the power of service, community, and the arts.